Yes, it is the end of the world as we know it – meaning, we are about to witness the final liquidation of the middle class across Europe and North America, the final solution to what the business elite call “the pampered Western workers” – along with the continued and further looting of the many by the few, the consolidation of the already dominant and hegemonic powers of the banking and corporate elite who now rule the world, and the culmination of the silent corporate coup which has taken over democracy. Get ready for some exciting, and also very challenging times. Here is how you can protect yourself from the crash that is coming, which will transform the Western world profoundly.
We are returning to feudal times. We are being thrown back into Charles Dickens’ time – and even further back, back to the medieval world, prior to the Magna Charta. Don`t wait to see what happens before you decide to act. Don`t wait for it to happen in its fullness, when it is obvious to everyone. If you do, then by that time it will be too late, and you will have been liquidated and economically wiped out.
If you want to survive, and even thrive through the fast-emerging Greater Depression, and the further devolution of modern industrial society into a global neo-feudal regime, pay close attention now. The writing is on the wall, and the hour is late.
Around the world, including across Europe and North America, and especially in the United States, community-building, community revitalization and community economic development are urgently needed. Since the answers and aid don`t seem to be coming from on high, the people will have to do it themselves. Better sooner than later – and now is best.
We are about to see disaster capitalism at its worst. Get ready. Now.
Until the people embrace their power, reclaim their government and their democracy, kick the corporate elite out of government and institute serious anti-trust and election financing legislation, it will be up to the people to help themselves.
Either way, it is up to the people now.
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The crash is coming, and as always, those who are prepared will fare far better than those who are not. This is a relatively short article on how we can prepare ourselves for possible economic hard times ahead. A storm is gathering, and we had best seek shelter now, before it hits.
The coming economic crash will hit hard, but the hard times will be temporary. We will get through it, and come out the other side – possibly bruised and battle-scarred, but the wiser and more street smart for it.
Make hay while the sun shines, as a wise proverb goes. Or as a Chinese saying puts it, “You don’t wait until you’re thirsty to start digging a well.” Get prepared now. You will most likely regret it if you don’t – and probably regret it severely.
Action is required. Think, plan, discuss, and above all, act. And do it now, while you can.
Be happy that you have the capacity for foresight. Those who do not will be blind-sided, and will suffer greatly for the lack.
Look ahead, be prepared, and help the people with knowledge and foresight. This is simply a matter of common sense, or at least it should be.
As Robert Weidemer, Author of America’s Bubble Economy, and Aftershock, has said, “I liken it to a doctor. If you had pneumonia, and you came to his office and he simply patted you on the back and said, “Take two aspirins – you’re going to be fine” – and instead in a week you’re dead, is that really the kind of advice you want?” No, clearly not. We have to be willing to deal with the truth, or the truth will deal with us. It is as simple as that.
And it’s not all bad news. It has a lot to do with what we do about it. And the first thing to do, the first decision we need to make, is to get informed, and get the straight facts. Without that, we’re lost, and the future will be harsh on us. So let’s dig in.
Gerald Celente – who is unrivalled in global trend analysis, with a record of thirty years of stunning predictions, including predicting the economic crash of `87, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Asian economic tsunami, the collapse of the dot com bubble and the housing bubble, and more – summarized his advice for weathering the coming storm this way: gold, guns and a getaway plan.
I would rephrase that, to say that what I feel we need now, to not only weather the storm but also to transform our society and bring about a better world, is: land, community, and democratic revolution – with well laid out contingency plans in place in case we need to make a temporary strategic retreat to a stronger position, as Sun Tzu, history’s greatest strategist advises, in order to regroup and advance later, when the timing is more ripe for major social change, and the people are ready for it.
Non-violent democratic revolution now, Gandhi-style, would be best and wisest, and is urgently needed; but it may be a little while longer before the people are ready to embrace their power, and to reclaim their democracy. In the meantime, while we continue to work for social change and the healing of this world, we will need to protect ourselves and one another as best we can from the economic blitzkrieg that has only just begun.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start with the basics, and go from there.
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Let’s start with the obvious, with savings – there are none anymore. Not only is the middle class being wiped out, and few have any money for savings, and instead are going deeper and deeper into debt and are sinking fast, but even for those few who do have savings, the low interest rates are resulting in negative interest when inflation is added in: you are losing money by putting it in the bank. So don’t do that – it’s stupid.
What it means is that you are paying the banks so that they can hold your money, and let it dribble away on you – and you are losing money to the banks while they take your money, leverage it 10, 20, 30 times or more through the fiction of fractional reserve banking, which is legalized counterfeiting, and use it in financial speculation in the global casino to make more money, every day, while your money sits there in their bank, and while every day you lose more. How insane does this sound as an investment and savings strategy? It is patently foolish, and quite mad. But people continue to do it, because they don’t understand what is going on: they don’t understand that they are being swindled and robbed.
Remember also, that the books are being cooked. Chronic and systemic lying has become a part of our culture, or at least, the culture of the elite. Remember Arthur Anderson and the “creative accounting” that Dick the prick Cheney declared his great adoration for, and which eventually brought down Enron and others? Well that sort of fudging of the numbers is common practice in the corporate world, and it is also common practice, in fact standard practice, with governments now as well. Unemployment figures are fudged. Governments stop counting people in the unemployment numbers if they’ve stopped looking for work. The official unemployment rate in the US is 8%. But when you look at the shadow statistics, the real unemployment rate is closer to 22% – something along the lines of Greece and other failing economies. The same is true with the budget figures.
There is great hew and cry about balancing the government budget, and everybody is up in arms about it, but the real problems are never counted on the ledger, and never enter the discussion – they’re not even mentioned. The real problems with the US debt and deficit, for example, are five-fold: one, tax breaks to the richest few and the giant corporations have resulted in massive losses of revenue, meaning, budget short-falls and deficits, and mounting debt; two, continued, massive subsidies to the big corporations mean huge expenses to the government, the treasury and the people, and further deficits and debt; three, multi-trillion dollar bail-outs for the super-rich and the big banks have bled the treasuries dry and driven the debt up even further; four, a private, for-profit health care system, which is twice as costly as the public health care systems of Europe and Canada, is bleeding the country dry; and five, most centrally, the military-industrial-security complex, the war machine and the police state soak up over a trillion dollars in public money every year. There is your deficit. But these things can’t even be discussed. These things are not even mentioned. These things don’t appear on the ledger. They are hidden in a cloak of silence, and instead, the people are told that it is their old age security that is the problem, and the meager assistance they get in terms of health care, by way of Medicare and Medicaid. It is a lie, and the people are catching on, and are sick of it.
And both Obama and Romney, the Democrats and the Republicans, are lying. One is simply more slippery than the other, but both are liars, and both are working for the same ruling corporate and banking elite who fund their elections. The majority of the American people know this, and that is why they don’t vote – they refuse to endorse a corrupt system where the two parties both serve the same ruling corporate elite, at the expense and the increasing misery and hardship of the people. The people are fed up with the lies.
The same is true with the official figures on inflation. The actual rate of inflation is far higher than the official numbers would have you believe – for the simple reason that increases in food costs and home heating are not counted in the inflation figures. How does that make the slightest sense? Clearly, for the 50% of Americans who now live below, at, or just above the poverty line, the cost of food and home heating is very significant, and when these costs jump, as they have, and greatly so over the past several years – thanks to global warming and peak oil, along with the artificial scarcity that has been created by the agribusiness giants and other corporate elites – the cost of living jumps to much higher levels as well.
So the figures are cooked when it comes to inflation. Who cares whether the price of Rolexes go up or down? The rich will buy them anyway, and the rest can’t afford them. What matters to most people is the cost of food, fuel and home heating – none of which are counted in the inflation figures.
And when you take into account the real level of inflation, the real increase in cost of living, the interest rates paid by the banks don’t even come close to keeping up. As I say, if you put your money in the bank, you are losing money. It’s foolish. Don’t do it. Take it out.
If you want to save your money, the last thing you should do with it is put it in the bank. There are much smarter things you can do with your money than this.
Interest rates are being kept artificially low in order to help the exporters. As a result, it makes no sense to put your money, if you have any, in the bank. The rates of interest are so low that inflation actually outpaces them, and you end up losing money by putting it in the bank – that's right: you lose money by putting it in the bank. The point has to be emphasized because it goes against a lifetime of deeply engrained conditioning. Well, our conditioning has failed us: we must now deal with reality. You are losing money by keeping it in the bank. Take it out. Period.
(My apologies for those who are quick on the uptake, but there are a lot of people out there who are functioning with minimal brain wave activity, because they are lost in a fog of chronic stupor, stemming from a life of quiet desperation. The dreamy and the sleep-walking need to be protected too, however, and not just the more clever ones and the alert.)
There is no more incentive for savings, with interest rates so low, and putting your money in the bank now is simply foolish. Not only will you lose money, but when the coming economic collapse hits, as Gerald Celente, Max Keiser and all of the best analysis shows it certainly will, and soon, banks will fold like houses of cards – and when they do, you can say goodbye to your money.
Government deposit insurance plans won't be able to keep up with the scale of the collapse, and people will lose their savings, period. As Gerald Celente says, and he’s right, “The only money that you have, that is secure, is the money you can put your hands on.” If it’s in a bank, it’s not secure: and you’re losing money every day it sits there anyway – so why keep it there?
But let’s take a look at the coming collapse, and how it is being brought on, and what it means, before getting further into what we can do about it, or at least prepare for it, so that we are not devastated by the impact, but can ride out the storm in relative ease, and with little pain.
There is a $50 trillion credit and debt bubble that is about to burst – and it will make the collapse of the housing bubble look like a school children's picnic. This is what the politicians and the elite media won’t tell you. Some of them are simply financially and economically illiterate, and indeed, most of them are. Others are simply liars.
What is coming will dwarf the last Great Depression, and the politicians are either useless in their blindness and their lack of understanding of it, or are simply corrupt, and in on the take which is going to follow, as the super-rich eat the poor and the middle class, along with most of the millionaire class – the other 99.9% – all of whom will suffer greatly, and most of whom will be devastated by the collapse.
Get ready for the bursting of the mother of all bubbles. This is going to be a big one.
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The credit and debt bubble has been inflated fifty-fold since 1970: that is what fuelled the wild frenzied growth and expansion that was corporate globalization – it’s all floating on a bubble of credit, and that bubble is about to collapse. And that's not even counting the quadrillion dollar derivatives bubble. The ship is going down. It's not the end of the world, but it is the beginning of what Gerald Celente calls The Greater Depression. The super-rich billionaire class is about to devour the remainder of the middle class, as well as the poor and the mere millionaires. It is endgame.
But let’s see how this is coming about, and why, so that we understand it better, and therefore can better protect ourselves, and respond with intelligence and a clear awareness of what is happening and what needs to be done.
Two bubbles are about to burst, and both are of enormous size. One is the debt bubble, and the other is the dollar bubble – and the broader currency bubble of paper money more widely. Let’s look at the debt bubble first, although the two are deeply inter-related.
The US government is now $16 trillion in debt – and there is no way that can be paid back. The US has gone, in just over forty years, from being the world’s leading lender nation, to being the world’s leading debtor nation.
“Hey buddy, can you spare a trillion for my war and empire habit? I need a fix.”
“Man, I’d love to hook you up brother, but dude, you’re broke – and your credit is way over-extended. Sorry dude. No dice. No can do.”
That would be how the conversation would go between the US and its creditors, if sanity prevailed, but unfortunately, there is always money for war and empire – at least until the game is over, and the empire falls: as it will, and it is crumbling now. The world is wearying of carrying the astronomical American debt, and will not prop it up or support it much longer.
The US government owes $1.16 trillion to China alone. And now that China owns the former US manufacturing base, thanks to off-shoring and globalization, and now that the US imports everything except bullets, bombs and porn, which it exports in abundance, there is no way that the US can ever repay even China, let alone the rest of the world.
If you think that a Greek default on debt would bring a hard impact on the world’s economy – which is ridiculous, really, considering Greece accounts for only 0.4% of the global economy – wait until you see what happens when the world’s biggest economy and the world’s biggest debtor nation defaults. We’re talking tectonic events that will follow. The US government is unlikely to officially default on its debt, but that is what is going to happen, whatever the official line may be. The debt simply can’t be paid, and neither can it even be sustained any longer. The collapse is coming, and fast.
The US now has a trade deficit that runs into billions of dollars a day. You can’t keep buying things and selling nothing – importing everything and exporting nothing – and not go broke sooner or later, and have your credit cut off. The US is fast approaching this very real trade deficit cliff – the time when the world says, “Uh-uh dude – you’re credit is way over-extended. No dice. Take a hike – you’re broke.”
Off-shoring of the manufacturing base has de-industrialized the nation, and, along with an extremely expensive for-profit, private health care system, and a trillion dollars in military and “security” funding per year, it is bankrupting the nation. These are the simple facts, and any honest economist or financial analyst will tell you the same – if you can find one, and they are unfortunately rare. But it doesn’t take an economist or a trained financial analyst to see the writing on the wall. The figures are clear, and the figures speak for themselves. In fact, you either have to be ignoring economics altogether, or else be wilfully blind not to see what is happening, and what is coming.
We should remember the Italian saying however, “Just because you stick your head in the sand doesn’t mean the head ache will go away.” In the pursuit of ever greater short-term profits, the corporate elite have de-industrialized America, and it is sinking in debt as a result, and is now facing imminent economic collapse. And when America goes down, it will drag the rest of the world down with it. Thank you plutocrats and billionaires: you have been too kind to us poor and hapless plebes – what on earth would we ever do without you?
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The business elite don’t care that the US government and the entire US economy is going into the toilet and is facing bankruptcy – they’re making a killing off off-shored production and profits, along with the military-industrial-security complex and the disastrously expensive for-profit health care system, both of which are further bankrupting the nation, and they frankly have no allegiance to the United States or any other country. The country is sinking, but the elite continue their feeding frenzy, devouring the host like maggots on rotting flesh. And they don’t seem to mind the feast, or the stench one bit.
The American government is racking up a further $1 trillion in debt every year – or we should more properly say, the political and business elite who run the nation and who have high-jacked democracy and the government are racking up another trillion dollars in debt a year, with their trillion dollar annual budget deficit. The debt belongs to the business elite and their corrupt politician friends, not the people, and it is the business elite and their cronies who should be made to pay it.
Certainly the people should not pay for the debts of a corrupt and greedy few. The tax cuts for the rich, the bailouts for the rich, and the imperial war machine that feeds the rich: these are what created the debt, along with the bad bets that the banking elite made, which the people are being forced to pay off, shamelessly – so let the elite eat their own debt. They made it, they can eat it.
Suck it up boys. It’s yours. You eat it.
More importantly, take away the empire, the more than 700 military bases around the world and the police state at home, and the US government has a budget surplus. But – shhh…. Don’t say that aloud: such things cannot be spoken. Such things are not profitable to the elite who rule the country – or at least, not profitable enough for their liking. They like astronomical profits: and war and empire, while bankrupting the nation, does line their pockets very, very well, so they are in no mood to give them up, regardless of what the people want.
That is why there is now a police state in America: because what the people want and what the ruling elite want are starkly opposed, and repression is becoming more necessary, now that the propaganda system is failing to ensure adequate obedience, docility and compliance among the masses, who are supposed to be distracted and bewildered sheep, so they don’t get in the way of elite rule and the empire. Democracy is being born in America, and the elite like it not a bit, and will suppress it by every means necessary.
The US is a powder keg, by the way, just as Europe is, precisely because of this divide between the people and the ruling elite, and the crisis of legitimacy which grows daily as a result; but that is a topic for another discussion.
There is no way the US debt can be repaid. The only way to get rid of it, is to write it down. But how do you convince creditors that you’re only going to pay them ten cents on the dollar, or less, maybe two or three cents on every dollar owed? That is a hard sell, and the US can no longer afford its extraordinarily costly military campaigns – at least not with such wild abandon – to force creditors to accept the terms of the local mob boss.
The US is an empire in rapid decline, due to the off-shoring of its manufacturing base and its perilously bankrupting – financially, economically and morally – imperial warfare; among other reasons, such as the gutting of the school system and the dumbing-down of the nation, which is causing the US to lose its innovative edge, brain drain aside, so that any economic recovery becomes that much more challenging – in addition to the de-industrialization and the gutting of the productive economy in favour of trans-national corporate and financial interests (which is the root of the problem, exactly as predicted by opponents of NAFTA, neoconservatism, neoliberalism, the IMF and World Bank, and the neo-feudal monopoly capitalism of the Freidmanites and the business elite who promote and run all of the above.)
Now that the US is rapidly losing its global hegemony as the unrivalled, ruling world superpower, because it is losing its global economic hegemony, and its military might is beginning to fail in propping up that economic hegemony – or even in succeeding in war, as Iraq and Afghanistan have proven – creditors cannot be so easily bought, bribed or intimidated. A more savvy means of writing down the debt was needed. And the answer the ruling business elite have come up with is to devalue the currency.
“Sure, we owe you 16 trillion dollars…. Guess what, we’re devaluing our currency, and of course we’re going to pay you in our currency, not yours, and our currency is worth less and less in relation to yours, so we will only have to pay you the equivalent of nickels and dimes. Suckers…”
And yes, that is exactly what the business elite thinks of the people – all people, other than themselves: whom they have an extraordinarily inflated opinion of, as the new god-kings and rightful rulers of the world. Hallelujah, and praise be to the almighty profits!
Devaluation of the currency: that is precisely what the elite are doing now with “quantitative easing” – a term that is deliberately vague and cryptic, because they don’t want the people to know what they are doing. If the people did know what the banking elite and their cronies are doing, there would be revolution in the streets tomorrow, if not lynchings of bankers as well. Which maybe wouldn’t be such a bad idea, come to think of it….But actually, no, I do not agree with the death penalty. The banking elite should simply face life in prison without parole – maybe the island of Elba would be a suitable place, considering their Napoleonic complex: little men with infantile dreams of grandiosity and world empire. They can even have their own crowns, and conduct their own ridiculously regal coronation ceremonies, in their cozy cells decked with the finest of linens, scotch and cigars. Nothing is too good for the lowest of the low.
The financial elite and their political servants are devaluing the currency through “quantitative easing” which means literally printing money out of thin air (and, of course, handing it over to your banker buddies who are – whoa, actually you are your banker buddies, since the Federal Reserve that prints the money is quite literally a cabal of private banking elites.) And they are systematically devaluing the currency in the process, because that is the only way to wipe out the debt.
So the political elite gets a massive debt write-down from the devaluation of the currency; and through the mechanism of currency devaluation, which is “quantitative easing” – or the printing of trillions of dollars out of thin air – the financial elite print themselves an additional $20 trillion. So the political elite are happy, if they have any remaining allegiance to the nation at all, or want to prop up the shell of the US government at least, to use it for imperial adventures and money-making schemes for themselves and their cronies – and they are even more happy if they don’t have any remaining allegiance to the nation or its government, because they will receive multi-million dollar payouts when they leave office, in return for their loyal service to the reigning corporate and financial elite, regardless of what happens to the nation. And the financial elite are happy, because they’ve just printed themselves and additional $20 trillion dollars, which they will use, and are using to buy up even more real world assets, land, businesses, farms and factories. And the remainder of the corporate elite are happy, along with the banking elite, because when the currency collapses and is destroyed, they will have a field day buying up assets at fire sale prices, from people and companies and governments that have gone bankrupt – and furthermore, they will have a devastated population that is so desperate, so impoverished, and so devoid of a social safety net, which has just been successfully destroyed, that the people will work for nothing, and will grovel for jobs that pay less than subsistence wages. Oh joy! This is the perfect storm, giving the perfect benefits, to the people who matter: the ruling elite.
And here we go, back to Charles’ Dickens age, to the time of the early industrial revolution, when wages were extremely low, and not even enough to survive on, hunger was chronic and pervasive, hours were long, benefits and old age pensions were non-existent, and the rich ruled freely and amassed great fortunes without the slightest restraint or concern for the people – the time of Blake’s dark Satanic mills, and grinding, crushing poverty and servitude for all but the richest few.
And the elite could not be more thrilled. Profits are going to soar, and the richest few will grow even richer, and that’s all that matters. The country and the people will be destroyed and laid low, but who cares about such trifles as these?
The global business elite are aiming to break the back of democracy, the American government, and all democratic governments, and to break the spirit of the people and subdue them, through economic and financial terrorism; and thereby, to rule over them, through plunging them into sheer desperation, crushing poverty and abject dependency: so that the elite can rule unimpeded by democracy and the people, as the new pharaohs or god-kings, and the people will be as slaves – willing and compliant draft animals, eager to work for nothing but a few scraps from their masters, and too afraid and dependent and broken to complain about it. This is the birth of neo-feudalism. Get ready for the fight of your life.
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As the banking elite devalue the currency, the purchasing power of the people also falls, of course, so that those dollars in your pocket will buy less and less, and are worth less and less. Soon you may need a wheelbarrow to buy a loaf of bread – just as what happened in the Weimar Republic, where they used to say that if you left a wheelbarrow full of money on the street, chances are the wheelbarrow would get stolen. And the currency will collapse for exactly the same reasons. The response to unpayable debt in the Weimar Republic – the collapse of which, we should remember with a chill, gave birth to Nazi Germany – was to print more money to pay the debt. The currency naturally collapsed, as any reasonably intelligent person could see, at least upon reflection, was inevitable, and the German mark was devalued to 1/1000th of its former value in the span of just over two years. And sometimes currency collapse unfolds much more swiftly, in a matter of days.
In this way, by systematically devaluing the currency, the banking and corporate elite are also, in reality, shifting the debt onto the people – their debt – while they further engorge themselves: because the people are effectively paying a tax to the banking elite, by having their currency devalued, which is the equivalent of handing a certain growing percentage of every dollar to the bankers who are destroying the value of the currency deliberately.
Yes, everyone’s money is devalued when the currency is devalued, including that of the elite, but there is a very important nuance to this, which makes the elite come out on top, and they gain immensely while everyone else loses by a conscious devaluation of the currency. There is first mover privilege involved. If you have an additional trillion dollars to spend before anyone else – because you just printed it – you can buy up real assets, such as land, real estate, stocks, shares, factories, office buildings, homes and businesses, with close to the same former value of that currency: as that trillion dollars gets circulated through the economy, there is more money available chasing the same amount of goods, which means the money becomes worth less, and will buy less – but you bought your assets before the additional trillion was widely circulated and began to have its greatest effect in devaluing the purchasing power of the currency. So you come out on top, as a banking elite, with another trillion dollars in real world assets, while the slobs who make up the other 99.9% all see a loss of real wealth, because their money is now worth less than it was just a year ago, or even a month ago.
Hurray for bankster fraud artists! Isn’t it great? Don’t you just want to give them a hug? Or maybe a slap on the face and a ticket to prison would be more appropriate – with no get-out-of-jail-free cards at their disposal.
This is what “quantitative easing” means – it means the banking elite print trillions of dollars for themselves, which they use to buy up real world assets – land, farms, factories, homes and businesses – leaving the currency devalued in turn, and everyone else the poorer for it.
This is what you get when you put private banking elites in charge of the creation and printing of money. This is why Jefferson, Jackson and Lincoln fought with all their might to keep the printing of money under the democratic control of Congress. This is why Woodrow Wilson was profoundly regretful and filled with remorse when he realized what he had done by signing the Federal Reserve Act in 1913, which created the privately owned central bank that is the Fed, and which transferred this vital and extreme power of money creation to the hands of the private banking elite. We were duped, and the people are only now beginning to realize it, nearly 100 years later, when the game is almost over.
And make no mistake, it is endgame folks; and when the music stops, the great majority of the people will be financially wiped out.
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The longer term effects of “quantitative easing” – the printing trillions of dollars out of thin air and handing it to the banking elite; the same banking elite by the way, who control the printing of the money in the first place; and the systematic devaluation of the currency which occurs invariably as a result, are even more disastrous, as the elite well know. Disastrous for the people that is, not for the elite – and the longer term is almost here. The collapse is at our doorstep, as the banking elite have known and fully expected.
In the first ten days after Obama won the “election” – with his “landslide” of 29% of the American people voting for him – when the economy no longer needed to be propped up to make Obama look good, a trillion dollars was wiped out of the equity markets. If you don’t think the economy is going down, you’d better think again, and you’d better take another look – a very hard look – because your ass is hanging in the wind, my friends.
The result of the massive “quantitative easing,” the printing of trillions of dollars out of thin air – along with the further enrichment of the already stratospherically richest few, and the transfer of trillions of dollars from the people to the banking elite, with the trillions of dollars Bernanke is dumping from a helicopter onto the Wall street banks (and note, his helicopter flies only over Wall Street, and not anywhere else) – is that the currency is systematically being devalued, and will without question, and as a result, collapse.
Printing trillions of dollars out of thin air and handing it to the banking elite is not helping the economy – and nor was it ever intended to: it is helping the banking elite gather up even more wealth and power. And it is robbing the people in the process, and bringing on a collapse of the currency – which will enable the elite to further rob the people, in the wake of the devastation. This is disaster capitalism writ large. Naomi Klein hadn’t seen anything yet. Just wait for the orgy of feasting as the elite devour the remains of the economy and the wealth of the world in the aftermath of a global economic meltdown. It will be a sea of piranhas on a fattened cow, thrown into the river. And guess who is the cow. That would be you and I.
When the collapse of the currency comes – as it will, and the Fed and the banking elite who run and own the Fed are ensuring the collapse of the currency, by their own actions, by systematically devaluing the currency with endless rounds of “quantitative easing” – the banking elite will feast on the carcasses of dead and dying companies, families, communities and privatized government assets; and will engorge themselves on the economic slaughter and carnage they have themselves created, like ravenous vultures, or vampiric hordes, buying up real assets such as homes, real estate, government assets and businesses at fire sale prices – because the people have been forced into bankruptcy, and the banking elite are the last ones standing, and will feed on the dead and the dying, the crippled and the maimed, like ravenous beasts. And if you think this depiction is too stark, watch and see what happens. I think you will find these words have been an understatement, if anything. The carnage will be extreme.
It is a game of monopoly, and it is winner-take-all. Or so the elite have planned it. But they did not account for the fact that revolution will not be permanently suppressed. Their victory will be hollow, and it will be short-lived, mark my words.
Nevertheless, in the meantime, the economy is going down: and while the richest few will benefit enormously, as they do in every depression, the vast majority of the people – the other 99% – will suffer greatly, and their savings and wealth will evaporate, and will be devoured by the financial elite.
The blind are following the corrupt. If you follow the leaders now, you will lose, and lose more than you dare to imagine.
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The question is not if, but when the US dollar will collapse, and all indications are that it is coming soon. The Euro may crash before the dollar, but the race to the bottom is certainly on, and it looks like the US is winning. But whichever crashes first, the other will soon follow, if not immediately so, as the dominoes topple one by one.
Central banks around the world have begun the race to divest themselves of US dollars. China has said it is holding enough US dollars, and it was China’s purchasing of massive amounts of US dollars that was the main reason for the dollar not crashing sooner, and remaining relatively stable, despite the fundamentals being systematically eroded beneath its veneer.
Oil barons and oil rich nations are beginning to look toward the exit, and are starting the move to get out of the dollar, and more critically, are starting to sell oil in currencies other than the dollar. The reign of the petrodollar is coming to an end, and with it, the reign of the US dollar as the de facto reserve currency of the world. OPEC nations are selling off dollars, as are China and India and central banks around the world. Even drug dealers and drug cartels are ditching the dollar, and are starting to prefer other currencies for their money laundering. The dollar is most definitely going down.
The US dollar has gained some marginal ground recently, temporarily, but that was because foolish people shifted money from one worthless paper currency which was and is in obvious crisis – the Euro – into an equally precarious and decidedly unsafe haven – the dollar. The crash that is coming is systemic in nature however, and no such marginal and short-term advantages will save the dollar from its demise. And the death of the petrodollar system and the rise of China are two more reasons why the US will soon cease to be the de facto reserve currency of the world: and when that happens, the bottom will fall out of the dollar – if not before.
The US dollar is going to crash, and when it does, because central banks all over the world are loaded to the gills with them, and can’t get rid of them fast enough without triggering the very run on the dollar that they are fleeing, the financial system of the entire Western world will go down with it, and most parts of the global financial system as well. Say hello to the paper money apocalypse, as Max Keiser so aptly calls it. It is coming soon, and it is coming fast. As Max and others have said, the banking elite are using financial weapons of mass destruction, and the results will be nothing short of horrendous for the people.
It is not just the US dollar and the Euro that are going to crash. Both of these currencies are in an extremely over-inflated bubble, and will collapse. When they do, when either of them does, most of the currencies of the world will implode with them, as the global financial system goes down. Only real assets, such as gold, silver, land and certain commodities will hold their value.
Commodities in general, other than gold and silver, are over-inflated, and commodity prices have been driven up by speculation – and this is another bubble that will collapse when the dollar, debt and currency bubbles collapse, because the brakes will be thrown on China`s sweatshop-to-the-world economy by the collapse of the Western markets of Europe and North America, which in turn will drive down commodity demand due to the lack of demand for industrial inputs and resources, and commodity prices will fall. Bear this in mind. Far more importantly, bear in mind what is about to happen to your imaginary paper money.
Your money is soon going to be worthless, or very nearly so. It may be worth thirty cents on the dollar, ten cents on the dollar, or less than a cent. Get rid of it now. Shift your money into hard assets, like land, tools, heritage seeds, food, solar and wind power, and gold or silver.
Leave a little cash set aside for fluidity, in a mixed basket of currencies, but translate 90% of your assets and savings now out of paper money, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, retirement `savings plans` and the like – now. And of course, definitely take your money out of the bank – whatever form it may be in.
(And no, safety deposit boxes are not secure in a crash either: the banks simply seize them, trying to cover their own over-extended and hyper-leveraged asses, and tell the people to go fuck themselves. Your sweet-natured bank teller might not like it, but she`s not in charge – she just takes orders from above.)
Move your money now.
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The economy is going to implode when the currency system collapses, as it is going to begin to do within six to eighteen months from the time of this writing (December 4, 2012), according to the best analysts; and when it does, the smaller banks will collapse, and the bigger banks will seize all deposits, seeking to protect themselves – they will throw you overboard like yesterday`s trash, make no mistake. In either case, the long and short of it is – you lose. Get your money out of the banks now.
Don’t be a schmuck, get your money in the truck, and tell the banks, “Thanks. And good luck.”
Ok, we have to have a little levity, or the subject will be either massively boring, or else painfully, oppressively, maybe even paralyzingly frightening. So that was a moment of frivolity to lighten the mood. My apologies to the more serious and sombre readers.
But to return:
Look at what happened in Argentina when the economy collapsed in 2001. Banks closed their doors, and refused to return the peoples’ money. Armoured trucks hauled money and gold out of the country for Citi Bank and other criminal syndicates, leaving the people with nothing more than a parting phrase: "Fuck you."
Of course, the betrayal of the banks, along with the betrayal of the entire political class – and the proven, utter failure and total disaster of following neoliberal IMF policies, which was what created the economic collapse – are what made the people take to the streets in the millions after the collapse, and throw the neoliberals from power. So maybe the callousness of the banks was in some way a favour, for it awakened the people to their power.
By the way, there is more than a hint there as to what the people of Europe and North America should do when the collapse hits them in turn, after they have been sold the IMF’s poison pill of neoliberal dogma and corporate chicanery, if not before.
Rise up people. You are being scammed and shammed, lied to, cheated and stolen from. The banking elite are not your friends, no matter what you may think of your genuinely nice bank teller or branch manager, who are mere cogs in a machine they do not control.
The banking elite are screwing you, and it is about to get a lot worse. They’re going for your pension money, and your life savings now, as well as your social programs, or what you have left of them. The gang rape is on. Do not stand for this – nor bend over. I am sorry to speak so bluntly, but the message must be conveyed somehow to a public lost in a stupor of denial. Something must rouse them from their slumber, and shake them until they awake. The house is on fire, and they are fast asleep, and in great danger.
Stand up people. Where is your dignity? Where is your common sense? Rise! If the fire alarm is annoying, think how much worse it would be to sleep through the fire. Well, the house is ablaze, though most see it not, and snore away like Rip Van Winkle.
It is time for the people to awaken, and to throw the money changers to the street.
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Argentina told the neoliberals and the IMF to take a hike, and made a dramatic economic recovery once the corporate elite, the IMF and their neoliberal cronies were no longer at the helm: with 8% annual growth over the past eight years, outpacing even China, and turning the country into one of the economically strongest and most stable nations anywhere in the world – certainly far more stable economically than the US, Canada, Britain or Europe, all of which are on the brink of economic collapse. The rest of the world should take note, and take a lesson.
Yes, though Canadians still have a strong habit of quiet, polite complacency, and the business writers are smug as to the strength of Canadian banks, it nevertheless remains the fact that the incomparably resource-rich nation of Canada is about to sink too, along with the US and Europe, because our thoroughly corrupt politicians have sold the country out – with the SPP, and with “deep integration” with the US – and have tied the nation to the sinking ship of the US economy.
Being the junior partner in a failing empire is only good for the local elite – as with any banana republic. This Faustian bargain will not benefit Canadians, but only the corrupt elite of the country, who have betrayed their people and the land, in search of a profitable position affixed to the rear end of the American corporate elite. Such behaviour is as pathetic and cowardly as it contemptible and short-sighted; and it is the people of Canada who will pay the greatest price for such foolishness on the part of their business and political `leaders`- who should be deposed and thrown from power immediately, and without delay.
The point remains however, in spite of Argentina`s example of how to respond to IMF and neoliberal-induced collapse: the banks screwed the people when the economy collapsed, and walked away with their money. Don't think the same won't happen here. It will. And if you refuse to listen, don't say you weren't warned.
And again, aside from the very real danger of banks closing their doors and refusing to return the people’s savings and deposits, which they have done in the past, and will very likely do again, there is, the steady debasement of the currency, which continues, and is accelerating and is approaching a critical threshold.
Take the example of the 1933 US Federal Emergency Banking Act. The US government passed a law that made it illegal to possess gold. The US dollar had been pegged to gold, and backed by gold, but the economy and the government were in crisis, so the response from on high, from the elite, was to devalue the currency. The 1933 law that was passed required everyone in the country to turn in their gold to the government, or face ten years in prison and a fine of twice the amount of gold you had. Once the gold was collected from the people, and paid in exchange for paper money, in US dollars, which was pegged to gold at roughly $20 an ounce, the government reset the value of the currency, pegging it to gold at $35 an ounce. The dollar was therefore devalued in relation to the benchmark of gold: it meant that the currency was radically devalued in one fell swoop, and the people lost 70% of their purchasing power, essentially overnight. This was quite simply a mass theft: a massive transfer of wealth from the people, and the people became, overnight, far poorer than they had been.
Now we are seeing the steady and rapid, systematic devaluation and debasement of the currency with the multi-trillion dollar rounds of “quantitative easing” – or the printing of trillions of dollars of paper money out of thin air. Your money is rapidly being devalued and losing its purchasing power. And further deep declines in the value and purchasing power of your increasingly worthless paper money are coming, and coming fast. Divest yourself of paper money, and also from banks. Get out now. Shift your money into real assets, or be prepared to lose most, if not all of what you have.
It’s a shell game folks, and the game is almost over. It would be best to catch on now, before the game ends, and you lose.
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So, if putting your money in the bank has become a patently stupid thing to do – considering you will lose money that way, through negative net interest rates when considering inflation, and further, because banks are not stable, nor trustworthy in times of crisis, and crisis is fast approaching – what then should you do with your money?
Well, if you have savings, the best place to put them – other than in land for garden space and mortgage-free, rent-free basic accommodation, along with seeds and garden tools, which together should be first priority – is gold and silver. Gold has gone from roughly $600 an ounce in 2006 – when I predicted the collapse of 2007, while virtually everyone was saying that everything was just rosy – to $1700 an ounce this November. Do you think your RRSPs, mutual funds, bonds or savings accounts are going to give you triple your money in six years? Not a chance. Did they triple your money over the past six years? Unlikely in the extreme.
Gold is beating just about everything during this time of currency deflation, economic stagnation and actual depression – in both yield and stability. Ditch your worthless paper money now.
Just do the math. It’s not complicated. Gold is not only more stable and more secure than paper money is even in the best of times, to say nothing of the coming currency collapse, but it pays a better yield now that currencies are being systematically and deliberately devalued. Just look at the numbers. Again, it’s not complicated. In fact, it takes real effort to avoid the obvious.
So do yourself a favour, and divest yourself of banks and paper money, including mutual funds, bonds and retirement "savings plans" that actually lose you money when inflation is counted in, or at best, severely under-perform in comparison to gold and silver, as well as having absolutely no stability in this new economic regime of multi-trillion dollar banker bailouts, helicopters dumping cash on Wall Street, quantitative easing and systematic currency devaluation leading to an unavoidable collapse.
Don`t follow the leaders now – the ones who aren`t lost themselves are quite simply corrupt. And don`t follow the herd! They are about to walk off a cliff.
My father always asked me if I`d jump off a cliff if someone told me to. He wasn`t saying I was particularly sheepish, I don`t think – he was just trying to get me to think for myself. And now, I for one, am telling you not to jump off a cliff. Do not stick with the herd this time. They are going to go over the edge, and it will be carnage below.
The masses of people have been duped into a vast over-extension, and are living in a bubble – both financially and mentally. They have been hooked on credit and are up to their eyeballs in debt with mortgages, loans and credit cards; and to make matters worse, they are counting on paper money that is about to collapse in value, and become essentially worthless. When the debt and currency bubbles are punctured and burst, and they are about to, there will be wreckage the likes of which we have not seen for at least many hundreds of years.
Shift your paper money into something that will actually hold value, and even increase in value: land, seeds, tools, food, solar and wind power, silver and gold.
And if you can, shift to mortgage- and rent-free living, by any means available – even if it means a downshift and down-sizing in your accommodations, do it. You will be far worse off in two years if you are saddled with either rent or a mortgage. I know that is hard for many people, but if there is any way you can find to unburden yourself of these, or at least lessen their burden and your liabilities, do it.
Do not follow the flock this time. Protect yourself, and put yourself in the best position of strength you can, and you will be able to help both yourself and others as a result.
Again, community-building, community revitalization and community economic development are urgently needed, and since the answers and the aid don`t seem to be coming from on high, the people will have to do it themselves. Sooner is better.
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Just ask yourself, would I rather have food and feed my kids, or would I rather have a big house, and go hungry, and possibly be evicted through foreclosure? These will be the choices for most people in the near future, just as they have been the choices for millions of people already.
Shift now, move your money now, and cut your costs radically. Become as independent as you can. You will need to be.
And as Gerald Celente says, if you own a home, tear up your yard and plant a garden. (I’m paraphrasing here, but the quote is pretty accurate, from what memory serves.) “What do you want all that worthless grass for? You can't eat it, you can't smoke it – it's worthless. Tear it up and plant vegetables to feed your family.”
It's going to get rough. Those who are prepared will do well, or at least far better than those who are unprepared. Those who are unprepared most likely will be wiped out financially. This is the sad truth, and unfortunately, I expect few will listen, at least on this subject. We are too addicted to living on credit, and our addiction will be a hard one to break, and one that will cause much pain if it is not broken soon. For a great many people, there will be much crying and many regrets, I am deeply sorry to say. I wish more people would listen, and maybe they will, but the power of denial is strong, and it is much easier to follow the herd, even if they are marching in lock-step and asleep off a cliff, then to break from the flock and take a road less travelled.
Being highly social creatures, and also creatures of habit, when we are afraid, we tend to cling to the known, the familiar, and to follow the leader and stick with the bleating herd at all costs. But at certain times, this is the most dangerous thing that we can possibly do. At times, following the leader and sticking with the herd means death, or at least great peril. This is one of those times.
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